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Pope Gregory IX had, in August, 1230, ratified Frederick II's treaty
with the sultan as part of the peace of San Germano, and Frederick had
thereupon sent out one of his marshals, Richard Filangieri, to rule the
new acquisition. Filangieri proceeded to centralise the administration,
and ignored the old feudal constitution that made the barons the real
rulers of the kingdom. The result was a civil war, which spread to
Cyprus too, and occupied the next few years. When Frederick once more
fell foul of the pope, after 1236, this struggle, too, passed into the
East.
In 1243 Frederick's son Conrad, the child of the marriage with the
heiress of Jerusalem, came of age and the barons seized the opportunity
to proclaim that the regency of Frederick was at an end. As Conrad was
an absentee, a regency was, however, inevitable and the barons
conferred this on the Queen of Cyprus, the next-of-kin to Conrad's
mother. The imperialist garrison at Tyre resisted, but was speedily
forced to surrender. A year later the Sultan of Egypt attacked, his
forces swelled by the sudden addition of ten thousand Mohammedans --
the Kharis -- in flight before the new Mongol victories of the
successors of Genghis Khan. In September, 1244, Jerusalem was once
again in the hands of the Mohammedans.
The news caused throughout Europe something considerably less than the
universal dismay that had been the effect of Saladin's victory in 1187.
There was, however, enough of the crusading spirit still alive to make
the question of the recovery of Jerusalem one of the main questions
before the Council of Lyons in the following June (1245). Innocent IV
spoke of the state of the Latin East as one of the five wounds that
afflicted the Church, and it was decided that yet once again an attempt
should be made to rouse all Christendom, through the now traditional
means of sermons and special embassies to the princes. The clergy were
to contribute a twentieth of their revenues, the crusaders to be free
of all taxes for three years, and tournaments were once more forbidden
in the interests of the crusade. At the same time the pope planned a
new offensive against the Mohammedans through an alliance with the
ferocious Mongols, who, descending on the Near East from the all but
legendary country of China, seemed, from their victories of the last
few years, about to destroy Mohammedanism for ever.
In the vast army of the Mongols all the peoples, and all the religions,
of the vast continent between the Urals and the wall of China were
represented. Among them were the Nestorians -- Christians lost to the
sight of the popes for eight hundred years, who, in that time, albeit
heretics, had built up a flourishing Church that included in its ranks
Chinese and even Turks! The grandson of Genghis Khan was himself
married to a Nestorian, and daily in his camp the religious offices of
the Church, mass and the rest, were celebrated and officially
announced. It was no doubt through the Venetians, informed of this
through the commercial relations that took them everywhere, that the
pope knew of the favourable disposition of the Mongols, and in 1245 he
dispatched Franciscans and Dominicans to the East in the hope of
converting the Mongol princes.
None of these negotiations had, however, any effect on the fortunes of
the crusade. The task of retrieving the disaster of 1244 was taken up
once more by the French and by their king in person, St. Louis IX.
Alone of the princes of Christendom, he set all his energy to the task.
In England the preaching of the crusade had produced chiefly a flood of
new protests against the financial levy that accompanied it; the King
of Norway was allowed to turn his forces against the pagans of the
north; the Spanish princes were occupied with the Saracens on their
very threshold, the Catholics of Germany were bidden gain the
indulgence by fighting the pope's battles against Frederick II. It was
left to the King of France to recover the holy places.
He set out in June, 1248. At Cyprus, envoys from the Mongols, who were
at the moment preparing to attack the Caliph of Baghdad, met him,
proposing an alliance. By the time St. Louis's acceptance reached the
camp the Khan was dead, and it was three years before the saint learnt
the news of this failure (1251). By that time the crusade of 1248 had
ended in disaster
Like the crusaders of 1219, St. Louis directed his attack on Egypt. On
June 7, 1249, he took Damietta and then halted until reinforcements
arrived from France. His army was as lacking in discipline as it was
short in numbers. The reinforcements, Templars, Hospitallers and French
crusaders under the King's brother Alphonse de Poitiers, brought the
forces up to twenty thousand cavalry and forty thousand foot, and the
army prepared to attack Mansourah. The first successes of the fight
(February 8, 1250) were thrown away through the foolhardy recklessness
of another of St. Louis's brothers, the Comte d'Artois. St. Louis's
heroism finally drove back the Saracen attack, but the victory left the
crusading army exhausted. The Saracens now blockaded the camp,
dysentery and enteric fever set in, and on April I the order to retreat
on Damietta was given. As the broken forces retired the Saracens
attacked yet once again. It was a massacre rather than a battle, the
greatest loss of the whole crusading movement. The knights and nobles
were spared for the sake of what ransoms they might bring, but
something like thirty thousand of the army were slain, and St. Louis
was captured. He obtained his release by the promise to surrender
Damietta and to pay 1,000,000 gold besants. The Saracens, in return,
promised to free all the Christian prisoners in Egypt.
For another four years St. Louis remained in the East, negotiating for
the release of the Christian captives, strengthening the defence of
what places in Palestine were still in Christian hands, Acre, Jaffa,
Sidon, Cesarea. He was, however, never able to reorganise the
offensive, and finally the news of the death of his mother, who was
governing France in his absence, forced him to return (April 24, 1254).
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